The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms - Ross Murfin 2018

Triolet

Triolet: A medieval French verse form consisting of an eight-line stanza with the rhyme scheme abaaabab. The first two lines are repeated verbatim in the last two, and the fourth line is the same as the first.

EXAMPLES: Thomas Hardy’s “The Puzzled Game-Birds” (1901):

They are not those who used to feed us

When we were young — they cannot be —

These shapes that now bereave and bleed us?

They are not those who used to feed us,

For did we then cry, they would heed us.

— If hearts can house such treachery

They are not those who used to feed us

When we were young — they cannot be!

Other examples include Robert Bridges’s “Triolet” (1873), Frances Cornford’s “To a Fat Lady Seen from the Train” (1910), Sandra McPherson’s “Triolet” (1973), and Sophie Hannah’s “The Guest Speaker” (2003).